An interconnect fabric provides for communication among a set of nodes in a network. Communications originate within the network at a source node and terminate at a terminal node. Thus, a wide variety of networks may be viewed as a set of source nodes that communicate with a set of terminal nodes via an interconnect fabric. For example, a storage area network may be arranged as a set of computers as source nodes which are connected to a set of storage devices as terminal nodes via an interconnect fabric that includes communication links and devices such as hubs, routers, switches, etc. Devices such as hubs, routers, switches, etc., are hereinafter referred to as interconnect devices. Depending on the circumstances, a node may assume the role of source node with respect to some communications and of terminal node for other communications. In some instances, a node may play a source or destination role (or both) and act as an internal interconnect device.
The communication requirements of an interconnect fabric may be characterized in terms of a set of flow requirements. A typical set of flow requirements specifies the required communication bandwidth from each source node to each terminal node. The design of an interconnect fabric usually involves selecting the appropriate arrangement of physical communication links, interconnect devices, and related components that will meet the flow requirements.
Once a design of an interconnect fabric has been obtained, it may be desired to reprovision the design to meet communication requirements other than those for which the design was originally developed. For example, the communication requirements for a design may change over time. In addition, it may be desired to use an existing interconnect fabric design for a different application. Prior methods for reprovisioning an interconnect fabric design based on manual techniques are usually error prone and time-consuming.
Therefore, what is needed is an improved technique for reprovisioning the design of a network. It is to these ends that the present invention is directed.